Democrats blast Republicans' Gulf drilling bills

WASHINGTON — Democrats on Wednesday slammed House Republicans for pushing legislation that would dramatically expand offshore drilling before mandating new safety requirements in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

"It's hard to think that before we even enact legislation to improve the safety of offshore drilling - which we badly need - we would put more economies, more beaches and potentially more lives at risk from another spill and blowout," said Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J. "These bills were written as if the Deepwater Horizon disaster never occurred. They make offshore drilling less safe, not more safe."

Although federal regulators have imposed new safety and environmental rules on offshore drilling since last year's Gulf spill, proposals to boost companies' liability for spills, require improvements to emergency equipment and tighten well-design standards have stalled on Capitol Hill.

Holt delivered his criticism Wednesday during a House Natural Resources subcommittee hearing on three Republican-sponsored bills that would require government regulators to speed up their review of proposed offshore drilling projects and force the Obama administration to sell leases in U.S. waters with large oil and natural gas reserves.

The legislative package also would require the government to hold oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico even if it is still working on a post-spill environmental study of the region that regulators say is obligated by federal law.

"Following the BP oil spill, we should be reviewing the lessons, not lessening the review," Markey said. "The Republican Party continues to be in denial that reforms are needed to prevent a disaster from happening again."

'Drill-nowhere plan'

But Hastings argued the measures are necessary to undo an Obama administration "drill-nowhere plan that threatens both our economic recovery and, frankly, harms our national security."

Hastings added that his legislation would impose one safety-related change by creating a statutory requirement for leaseholders to receive a permit to drill from the federal government before beginning work on an offshore well. That requirement now is imposed through regulation, not statute.

Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., said that expanding offshore drilling would mean more jobs and more revenue for the federal government, which gets paid a percentage of the oil and gas produced on federal lands and waters. Oil and gas companies sent the government $10 billion in bonus bids and rental payments for offshore leases in fiscal 2008, Lamborn noted.

Witnesses from the Gulf Coast said the legislation would help restart an economy tied to oil and gas exploration that has been depressed by a decline in approved offshore drilling permits.

200 employees let go

Hank Danos, president of Larose, La.-based oil field services company Danos and Curole Contractors, said the company has let more than 200 employees go amid the downturn.

Danos added that when he runs into those workers, "some of them have indicated that they would be glad to come back to work if our industry would get moving."

"If this legislation were enacted, we would go back to work, and not only these jobs, but more jobs, would be created," Danos added.

Not just the oil platforms

Joseph Mason, a Louisiana State University professor who has studied the economic effects of post-spill policies, said that 40 percent of projected job losses are in professional fields, such as teaching, law, finance, insurance and real estate.

"It's not just about the wages that come from the workers directly on the oil platforms," Mason told the panel. "It's about where they spend the money, and the people that depend on them - and the people that depend on them and the people that depend on them - throughout the U.S. economy."

Mason predicted that if all three of Hastings' bills were enacted, the resulting boost in offshore surveying and other work in federal waters currently not targeted for drilling would create 250,000 jobs over seven years and 1.2 million in the long term.